In Market Research, Use Numbers With Caution

The other day one of my clients asked me a deceptively simple question: What is the best market research technique? It turned out to be a leading question, as he had in his hand an article from a recent article in Inc. that said, “Given limited resources … it generally makes sense to go quantitative.”

While of course quantitative surveys can generate important learning, it’s dangerous to assume there is any single “best” market research technique.

Quantitative research certainly has its place. It is particularly useful when a company is trying to determine how it can steal share from existing competitors. In this circumstance, the company can define the market space and rattle off performance dimensions that might matter to customers without much difficulty.

Qualitative techniques can also help to identify non-obvious ways to delight current customers. Consider a story told by Procter & Gamble Chairman A.G. Lafley about his own learning while working on the Tide brand in the 1980s:

“Every year consumers would rate the Tide powder cardboard package as excellent; excellent to shop; excellent for opening; excellent in use &#8212 on, on, on. So, I’m in basements in Tennessee, in Kentucky, doing loads of laundry with women, and after three or four or five of these one-on-one sessions, I’ve realized that not a single woman has opened a box of Tide with her hands.

Why not? How do you open a box of detergent? Why don’t you open the box of detergent with your hands? You’ll break your fingernails! You’re not going to subject those nails to a box of laundry detergent. So, how did they open the box? They had nail files; they had screw drivers; they had all kinds of things sitting down on the shelf over their washing machine, and they thought our package was excellent! And you know what? We thought our package was excellent because they were telling us our package was excellent.”

Qualitative techniques become even more important when a company is hoping to grow an existing market or create a new one. Quantitative research into non-existent markets is fraught with difficulties. How can you describe performance dimensions the customer can’t imagine? How can customers project usage of something they have never experienced? As the old saying goes, “Markets that don’t exist can’t be measured and analyzed.”

Companies too frequently default to quantitative research because they think there is safety in numbers. It’s a lot easier to justify a strategy by saying, “The data suggests” than by saying, “My intuition suggests.” But sometimes numbers provide false confidence and obscure real opportunity.

Ask yourself what a resource-constrained entrepreneur would do. It’s unlikely that they would raise money from investors to launch a large quantitative survey. Rather, they’d use that money to build a product, form a team, and try to get it to market so they can start the real learning process.

There are rarely silver bullets in business. A good market researcher is like a good investigative reporter. They use a variety of tools to pick up a problem and look at it from different perspectives. And they recognize that different tools are appropriate for different contexts.